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Stefan Feld is back, and he’s taking us on a trip under the sea this time. Because it’s better down where it’s wetter. But you won’t have time to watch the singing and dancing crustaceans, there’s science to be done. You only have two people working for you, an Engineer and a Scientist, but together with their swarm of robots they will do science, collect crystals and catch invading octopodes.

For years, the man Friday has lived alone on his island. But when Robinson was washed up on the beach, Friday’s peace was disturbed by this clumsy foreigner. He set out to train him to be able to get off the island again. In training Robinson, Friday was still alone. As are you in this game.

How often has this happened to you? You are peacefully tending to your farm, and suddenly a hole in the ground opens up and monsters come streaming out. Next you know, a bunch of heroes are charging you a ridiculous fee to take care of the problem and then make off with the monsters’ treasures as well. Being a Villager in Thunderstone is little fun. But you, you’re one of those heroes.

Nothing is easy when the gods are against you. Especially not getting home across the sea when the god in question is Poseidon. And even less when Poseidon is a friend from whom you just stole the last piece of pizza. That’s the setup of Odyssey – Wrath of Poseidon: up four players are Greek navigators on their way home, one player is Poseidon who feels slighted by the Greek’s victory at Troy. Together, they play an asymmetric deduction game.

Russian Railroads is a European optimization game, subtype worker placement. Every game, you try to do better than the one before, optimize your strategy and score a bit higher. But it’s not a typical game of the genre. Where you often have a lack of options in other such games, only one or two routes to victory which you try to use as well as you can, Russian Railroads gives you many different, viable ways to score. Its many moving parts create a fascinating whole that will let you find new ways to a higher score for a long time.

Guildhall was a surprise release by Alderac in 2012, there were no announcements or anything, the game was just there. Now the expansion/sequel Job Faire is out and was much less secretive. I guess we could all see the expansion coming. Just like its predecessor, its better if you don’t think about the game to thematically, if the medieval guild system had really worked like this game we’d still only have five bricklayers in the world, and where would we be then, as a civilisation? We probably wouldn’t be hating our fellow man over a card game, that’s where. And that would mean we’re not playing Guildhall.

Collecting gems to buy cards that are worth gems, making it easier to buy more cards. When thus summarized, Spiel des Jahres nominee Splendor doesn’t sound like much. But once you start playing, you will realize that games don’t have to sound complicated to draw you in, make you play again and again, try new approaches to outsmart your opponents. Because playing Splendor is not a difficult, but getting what you want with your opponents interfering is.

In an age of boardgames made of cardboard, some games stand out for their material. But a real wood cube as game “board” is not the only thing Master Thieves has to offer: you will also find a good amount of strategy and the greatest challenge to your memory and sense of direction I know about in any recent game.